Who Does That????

It is so freaking humid in my office right now. It feels like what I imagine the rainforest feels like. They can spend $250k to get hurricane-proof shutters on every window and door in the building but they can't fix this horrible A/C problem? (The $250k was federal grant money, but STILL.)

One of the many things I went shopping for this past weekend was Peanut's christening gift. I went to the local Jesus store figuring they would have something cute for a baby, but their selection was pretty weak. I couldn't do the Precious Moments stuff...I can picture Jeanne opening it and being like "thanks, so much" and then thinking to herself "crap, now I have to find someplace to put this shit." So I just bought her a little off-white and weathered keepsake box that has a window where you can put a picture. I figured that somebody will probably give her a rosary that she can put in the box. I've never actually bought anyone a christening gift before, so I had no idea what to get. I probably should have just bought her a cool looking wall cross from Hobby Lobby, but oh well.

I painted the dresser day before yesterday and it looks soooooooo much better. My dining room is 99% done now. There is one more thing I want to do to it, and then I will post some pics. And I want to give a shout out to Milkweed for giving me some awesome decorating ideas. If you haven't read Jessica's blog yet, go over there and do it! Plus, she has give aways for some of her adorable rehabbed furniture. And I also can't not mention my unofficial interior decorator idea-giver, Sarah Schnure. For reals, this chick has given me the best ideas and guidance ever. .

I went to the nail salon after work yesterday to get a pedicure and my phone rang while I was there. It was about 545. It was Neal and he was all like "hey" in a very somber way. It was his day to come home, so that is not a good sign. His company called him at 545pm, 15 minutes before he finishes his 14 DAY HITCH and asks if he wants a drilling job (he's assistant drilling right now) on another rig. And oh, by the way, we need you there tomorrow morning for another 7 days. He called me and was all, "what do I do?" We talked about it and he decided to say "no thanks." I'm not worried b/c another opening will come up b/c they're breaking out new rigs all over the place now, but COME ON. You cannot call someone up, 15 fucking minutes before they're about to leave after working 14 12-hour days in a row (PS - he worked from 6am until midnight Friday) and be like, "yeah, if you could stay another week, that would be great" Who the fuck does that? Seriously, WHO DOES THAT? He was all, "I can't do it. I just can't. I'll be miserable and mean to everyone out there and I can't do it" I wasn't complaining b/c I was ready for him to come home. So he should be at the house when I get home for lunch today. He'll just keep on assistant drilling until another drilling position comes up. And hopefully, next time, they'll call him in the middle of his hitch or after he's been home for a few days instead of doing it 15 minutes before he leaves on day 14. Again, WHO DOES THAT?

So yay because the week is halfway over and it's a 3-day weekend and I get to meet Hannah Claire Saturday and my dude will be home today and, last but not least, Friday is jean day at work!

Monday

I feel like I should take more pictures. This may involve purchasing a new camera. Like, I never take pictures anymore, EVER. This needs to change.

Now I need to paint the dresser/buffet. I finished the mosaic stuff, painted the knobs, and now it looks funny. What have I gotten myself into? What a freaking ordeal.

I just finished The Paris Wife and it peaked my interest in Hemingway (he was smart, crazy, and drunk - so unlike a writer, right?)so I decided to read The Sun Also Rises which is one of his most popular books, I guess. I started reading A Farewell to Arms a few years ago and never finished it. I need to put on my smart girl pants to read his stuff because it's a little hard to follow. I must must must finish this before I start reading anything else...but my next book will definitely be a no brainer.

And I think it's time that I make dentist appointments for Neal and I. But I just hate the dentist so much. And of course we both have different/weird insurance providers so the logisitics are a pain. I would rather go to the OBGYN and have a metal rod stuck up my whohaa than go to the dentist. That is pretty bad.

I went to my Aunt and Uncle's yesterday for BBQ and swimming. Aunt Babs was drinking O'Douls, so someone must have had a little talk with her.

I started watching Oprah's Behind the Scenes show on OWN. It's pretty interesting. I like it more than her actual show. She's just so real and honest and she hates high heels.

And let me just pass on this little piece of funny: our office manager is an older lady who is about two years away from retiring. She grew up in the 9th Ward and maaaannnn can you hear it in her accent. She always plans our office holiday lunches where everybody brings something to contribute. She wants to make enchiladas this week, so this is what she asks me to bring:

"Candice – Sour Cream and Gulamolie ??you know the green cream."

Yep, that was cut and pasted from her email. She's a trip, gotta' love her.

There was this episode of How I Met Your Mother where Lily's husband was gone for a few weeks and she missed him so much that she took her body pillow and dressed it up in his clothes and had a candlelit dinner with it. Now, I'm not saying that I've ever reached this point, but I can say that I see the appeal. Kidding, I'm just really really really really excited that he gets home Wednesday. Like, if I weren't at work I would sit at home and look out the window every 5 seconds waiting for his truck to pull up. Is that sad? It's probably a little sad. Oh well. Happy Monday!

Discount Retailers

Hannah's christening is next weekend so I went shopping yesterday for a dress and shoes to wear. I mean, I have dresses but they were either a little too casual or showed too much cleave. Instead of going straight to Banana and Ann Taylor, I went to Marshalls and got the cutest navy blue dress for $29.99 that was originally $115. What what!



I couldn't find any shoes there that I liked, so I stopped at Ross and found some Steve Madden grayish heels for $14.99 that were originally $60.



The christening is Saturday morning in Alexandria. From there we are leaving to go to Baskin for the night. His parents are having a BBQ and a small house warming shower for his sister at their house. It will be a country roads weekend, ya' heard?

Summertime

So the Harry Potter books are not available on Amazon for the Kindle. It seems that JK Rowling has not yet warmed to the idea of e-readers. Get with the times, JK! I would like to read these suckers before I see the last movie. But since I couldn't get the HP books, I started reading The Paris Wife, which is a novel that is written from the point of view of Ernest Hemingway's first wife. So far, so good. I really like it.

The weekend was good. I psycho-cleaned the house, went to Hobby Lobby (duh) and Sunday was allllll family. I hit up both Houma and my Dad's house. Houma was good. I got to see my cousin who lives in North Carolina whom I hadn't seen it about ten years, and her 1-year old daughter who is just the cutest of the cute. She just bebopped around and was so cute and friendly and chubby cheeked. I thought my mom was going to eat her. Like, she couldn't get enough. Oh, and I had a little chat with my ma' about over-sharing on facebook. Like, there is no need to mention that we are trying for a baby on facebook, mmmmmkay? And after all that I went to my Dad's only to be slobberd on by Aunt Barbara when I got there. Normally, when Aunt Babs is at my Dad's with only a few people around, she's pretty well behaved. Yeah, not Sunday. She must have been boozing earlier in the day because she was smashed. I swear, you never know what you're going to get with that one.

Neal called me last night and was all, "the weirdest thing just happened." Let me give you a little background on this situation....not anyone can just roll up to the rig that he works on. There is a gate at the only entrance and you have to check in with the gate guards before you can drive onto the location. Now who exactly are the gate guards? Well, in this case they are an old, retired couple who stay in their RV and guard the gate. They supposedly work as the gate guards part-time and they spend the rest of their time travelling around the country in their RV. They stopped Neal last night when he was driving back onto location and said, "Hey, are you the Saints fan from Louisian? We saw the sticker on your truck and your LA license plate. Hold on, we have something for you." At this point, the old lady goes into the RV and comes out with an iron fleur de lis wall ornanment and a silver fleur de lis platter and says, "someone gave me these and I don't have anywhere to put it so here, take it." He said they are both pretty decent. I'm not quite sure what to think of all this, but I guess if they look allright we'll keep them. But how do I address the thank you card? "Dear Old Gate Guard Lady, thank you so much for pawning off your old shit on my husband. We really appreciate it. Much Love, the Saints fans from Louisiana."

I'm almost done with the mosaic dresser stuff. I need to buy a few more tiles and then work the grout into it. And again, I can't stress this enough, don't ever attempt this on anything even remotely big. I wish I hadn't started it.

I have a radio on my desk and since this building is built of some sort of impenetrable material, I only get ONE radio station. And of course it's the oldies station. (And before you say anything, I can't stream Pandora from my computer because the nazi's block the Website on our computers.) So I listen to the Oldies at work all day every day and now it's playing "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys and it's making me think of Big Love and I'm kind of sad it's over. But I am glad that True Blood starts soon. I feel like True Blood = summertime. Not quite the same way that the summer season of Beverly Hills 90210 at the beach club = summertime, but it still = summertime, nonetheless.

Anyway, it's time to work! Hope everyone is having a good week!

Reading and Stuff

Since I got my Kindle, I've gotten into these 'dystopia' books. They're usually about teenagers in the post-apocalyptic U.S. that fight and fall in love and all that stuff. I read the Hunger Games series and then just finished a book called 'Divergent.' For some reason, the normal chick lit books just aern't cutting it anymore. I need a little break from Emily Giffin and Jane Green and all that.

And don't laugh, but I think I'm going to try reading the Harry Potter books now. I used to laugh at the movies and the adults who read and watched Harry Potter, but since Neal loves the movies I actually tried watching some of them and they're pretty good. I like having a series of books to read, so I'm going to start with the first book and see how it goes.

And I don't think I told ya'll but I attempted the mosaic thing on my dining room dresser/buffet. Um, I don't recommend it. It is SUPER tedious and really time consuming. I've done about half of the top of it and so I am going to attempt to finish it either this weekend or next. And now I need to either spray paint or buy new knobs for the drawers because the ones on there don't match anymore.

I have six post-it notes on my work computer right now. They each list something that I have to do followed by an exclamation point. It's really not a very effective way of formatting a to-do list. I used to be SO organized at work...what happened?!

Bye Bye Mini Vaca

Sigh. My mini vaca is over. It was too short. Sometimes, on a Monday, I am ready for the work week and all that it entails. But other times, well, I want to be a day lady for ever and ever and sleep in and watch tv and go to Target 50 times a week. I know I would get bored, but sometimes I just don't feel up for all the crap that I have to deal with at work. Money and budgets and projects and timelines and meetings and expectations and BLAH.

But can I tell you what a good time we had during our four days of fun and staycationing? Thursday we went to the Aquarium and the Riverwalk and Jax Brewery and drank beer during inappropriate daytime hours. We went to the Napoloeon House and had Pimm's Cups and the Carousel Bar and ate at Nola for dinner. It was wooondeful and relaxing. We came back to our side of the lake Friday and spent the rest of the weekend going to see movies and going to the Chimes and working in the yard and bbq'ing and it was the best.

When we were eating at Nola, we were sitting next to a table where I think a mother and daughter were sitting. In the middle of our meal, the manager (who looked like CeeLo Green) came over and started talking to them. I couldn't hear what was going on, but Neal heard and said that apparently the younger of the two had seen a roach in the ladies room and she was complaining. The restaurant ended up comping a good bit of their meal and I heard one of them go, "well, it looks like I'll have to find a new favorite restaurant." I mean what?! You're in the FQ in New Orleans...not exactly a place known for it's great smell and cleanliness. I don't think it's a big deal to see a roach in the bathroom of a restaurant. I mean, you're not eating in there, right? Now if you saw one in the kitchen, that's another story. But it's in the bathroom. While that's not pleasant, I don't think it means you should have to have your meal comped.

And do you know what I'm so excited about? That my brother and his wife get to go pick up their son this week after they've been away from him for 6 weeks. They both had to go to Air Force training so they left TJ with her mom for the duration. I wish I could be there to see him when he catches a glimps of Ted and Diwina. That poor sweet baby. I mean, you can't exactly explain to a two year old why you have to go away for 6 weeks. I'm so happy that they get to reunite this week and then all head to Chi-town together!

And I got my blood test results back from the obgyn; everything is a-ok. Told ya'.

This week is going to be so busy at work. Like, I just know it. I desperately need to find some motivation somewhere, 'cause I'm just not feelin' it right now.

Today is My Friday

1. I just need to get through one more day here, just ONE more day, and then I'm off for four days. Thank you sweet baby Jesus, I need days off. I also need to roam around the Quarter during the day tomorrow afternoon with a Big Ass Beer and spend money on funky french market jewelry that I wear one time and then never again.

2. I went to the doc to have blood drawn yesterday to make sure I'm ovulating. I haven't heard back yet, but I will be totally surprised if there's a problem. I think I'm okay. I think we are okay, I just think it's a timing issue. I checked my cycle and his work calendar and it looks like we won't have a shot at this until October (at the earliest). But after October, we get a few months of perfect timing. C'est la vie, it will happen when it will happen.

3. I got a text from Neal last night that said, "Tt's official. I'm leaving facebook. I just got a friend request from my mom." So yes, everyone, Marilyn is on the facebook. I give her two weeks until she gets the hang of it and then I'm going to have to deactivate my wall. I was already thinking about deactivating it anyway, since MY mother has been on some sort of mission lately where the goal is to embarass the shit out of her children on facebook. My sister had to deactivate her wall for this purpose. I'm not far behind.

4. I have small patches of grass growing in our garden. What do I do? Do I just get some weed killer and carefully spray the grass/weeds? I don't want to hurt my plants.

5. Word on the street is that the cigarette smoking pregnant bitch WAS pregnant with twins, but she lost one. And she's still smoking her cigs. This infuriates me so very much.

6. I watched Blue Valentine the other night. It was good, but don't watch it unless you're ready to be a little bummed out. Plus they try really hard to make Ryan Gosling look skanky in the movie and, you know, it just ruins it a little bit.

7. Um, Reese on the MTV Movie Awards? Her speech? I love her. And I think she may have been a little tipsy. I bet she gets drunk and talks some serious mean girl smack about people. So much fun.

Now it's time to work balls to the wall until I leave here today so that I don't have to worry about any of this mess for the next two days, ya' heard?!